So, We Are Terrorists!

Once Dr. Hossein Beik-baghban, a
renowned Iranian professor of Oriental Studies at the University of Strasbourg,
while addressing a gathering in our university, digressed to explain a bitterly
interesting memory from his first years as an Iranian scholar in France: "I was
standing in a queue in a large shopping mall in Alsace, waiting for my turn to
hand the goods over to the salesman and get the receipt, when a rustic old
German woman appeared before and started talking to me immediately. We talked
for some 10 minutes on different topics, and eventually, it came to nationality.
I asked her first and she replied that she is German. Correspondingly, she began
guessing about me, before I told her myself, and all of her guesses, one after
another, were wrong: Lebanese, Turkish, Azeri, Arab and Russian. I told her that
I'm Iranian. She remained silent and somewhat in shock for a few seconds, and
suddenly yelled with excitement: Oh! So, you are a terrorist!"

For me, as the member of a
developing society, and the citizen of a part of the so-called "Axis of Evil",
it would be more than probably a delightful experience to travel to the
proximity of the "Beacon of Freedom", and witness what I may never envision or
even think of. When I first received the acceptance letter, telling me that my
paper had been selected to be presented in an international conference in
Calgary, Canada, I instantaneously began to imagine myself in a British Airways
flight from Tehran to London, and to Calgary thereafter, wearing a navy-blue
suit, addressing a large public of young people and students from all around the
world, sharing a series of informative data and figures on energy crises and
global warming and so on; however, I could never imagine that such a dream would
be in vain within less than 3 weeks.

When I first submitted my forms
for the visa application and the relevant travel documentations to the Canadian
Embassy in Tehran, I never on earth was aware of the fact that "over 61 percent
of Iranian applicants' visa applications had been rejected by the Canadian
Embassy in 2007 and 2008," according to Vincent Valai, the member of the Quebec
Law Society.

The standoff between Tehran and
Ottawa started in mid-2003 on the grounds of the suspicious death of Zahra
Kazemi, an Iranian-Canadian photographer and freelance journalist who was
allegedly "murdered" while she was in the custody of Iranian officials in the
Evin Prison of Tehran.

In late 2007 and following the
escalation of mutual tensions over the frequent complaints of Ottawa against the
"negative human rights record" of Iran, Tehran ordered the Canadian Ambassador
John Mundy to leave the country and expelled him to degrade the representation
of Canada in Iran to the level of Charge d'Affaires.

Canada's then Foreign Affairs
Minister Maxime Bernier described the act as "retaliatory and entirely
unjustifiable" while casting doubts and concerns and expressing that "we
stand behind our ambassador, who has performed his diplomatic duties with
professionalism and dedication."

Mutually, under the pretext of
the possibility of having links with the radical students of the 1970s who
subsequently engaged in the U.S. embassy hostage-taking in 1980 in Tehran,
Canada refused to accept several candidates who were proposed by Iran for
ambassadorship in Ottawa and now, it's the third year that the bilateral
presence of the two countries is limited to the level of Charge d'Affaires.

Poor, terrorist Iranians

Following the emergence of new
tensions between Iran and Canada and after Michel de Salaberry, the former
Canadian Ambassador to Egypt and Jordan, took office as the Charge d'Affaires,
confusion and haphazardness culminated to its pinnacle in the Canadian Embassy
in Tehran.

According to the Canadian
Department of Citizenship and Immigration, 32 percent of Iranians' applications
in 2006 were rejected by the Embassy, while it aggravated to 51 percent in 2007
and hit the record in 2008 of 61 percent.

Netherlands-based
Persian-language Radio Zamaneh reported in February 2009 that "200
Iranians apply for temporary residence visas at the Canadian Embassy daily, and
the Embassy receives 60 dollars per each applicant regularly. Altogether, the
total income of the Embassy exceeds $360,000 per month and amounts to $4,320,000
annually and this accounts for approximately 12% of Canada's yearly imports from
Iran!"

Nevertheless, this is not the
whole story. Aside from the unreasonable and questionable rejections of visa
applications, the mechanism of the Embassy's interaction with applicants is
thoroughly unfair and discriminatory.

Daily Star reported in
May 2009 that "leading dissidents from Iran were insulted and humiliated by visa
officers at the Canadian Embassy in Tehran before two were barred entry to
Canada for a conference at York University." Mistreatment and humiliation have
long become a routine practice of the Embassy staff who don't even permit the
applicants to enter the Embassy and speak to the high-ranking officials.

It has not been precisely
identified what objectives the Canadian Embassy pursues by taking such
approaches; however, there are some allegations and suspicions which would
require an elaborate investigation. In a brief and unbelievable conversation
with a middle-age woman who was seeking a temporary visa to meet her sons in
Quebec, I figured out that she had paid an extra $200 to the embassy staff and
they facilitated the issuance of her visa under 5 days; something which is
almost unprecedented and impossible in most cases.

Clearly, the Embassy now
considers the procedure of visa issuance a lucrative source of business for
itself, though the deterioration of bilateral ties has contributed to the
inequitable hostility against Iranian applicants.

After 18 days of submitting my
materials to the Embassy, they handed me a piece of paper, explaining that my
visa will be issued "possibly" on June 9, and the conference which I was going
to attend was slated for June 7. I'll be deprived of attending the conference
for which I dedicated 2 months of research, more than probably because "I'm a
terrorist".

About the author:Born in 1991,
freelance journalist and writer. Kourosh Ziabari
is the author of book "7+1" and a
contributing writer for magazines of Netherlands, Canada, Italy, Hong Kong,
Bulgaria, South Korea, Belgium, Germany, UK and the US.